Rain
by Nigotta
Summary: Revised: With the rain, Naruto begins to feel new and refreshed. Trying to climb from the constant depression he has been living in, he knows he can't do it alone. SasuNaruSasu. Please review. Rated M for future chapters...maybe.


AN: Ok, I know I haven't posted for a reeaallly long time, but I plan to do so way more frequently. I'm currently writing the next chapters for Sick and Say Goodbye, but my first line of business was to rewrite Rain. I was so unhappy with how poorly planned and written this chapter was, so I rewrote it. If you read the original, please leave feedback, please and thank you!

~Nigotta

It was raining again, masses of water pouring from a broken sky and choking the dry, parched Earth that couldn't seem to drink it in fast enough. Standing at his foggy bedroom window, Naruto looked down into the mirrored puddles that were beginning to gather in the street below. Rain tracked down the old, wavy glass, leaving dripping shadows on his cheeks and clean trails on the dirty pane like tears on a dirty child's face.

Rainy weather never ceased to make Naruto depressed. Perhaps it was simply that the rain washed away the remnants of his mask to reveal that he was, in fact, already sad. Either way, the outcome was the same, and he couldn't decide whether he should feel pathetic or accept that this was how his life was.

When he had been younger, the sounds of a storm and startled in him an overpowering excitement. Drenched in mud and soaked through to the bone, it was as if nature were embracing him, filling his empty craving for affection. But he no longer felt that clawing excitement. No longer did he feel anything, so numb had he become.

Turning from the window and the sound of the rain's footsteps, Naruto pressed his back against the cold wall and slid down to the floor, legs crooked at the knees. He was thinking on the past and he knew it was because of his lack of sleep. He always seemed to slip into dismal daydreams when he didn't make room for the nightmares.

The comforter, tattered and soft with wear, lay rumpled on his otherwise bare mattress, but he hadn't slept in it's warm folds for days. He always marveled at how he never felt tired after these long bouts of insomnia. It was probably all thanks to the demon lodged in his core than anything on his behalf.

Glancing about the room, Naruto gave a thoughtful frown. Library books and scrolls were scattered about, but in an organized, almost OCD manner. Some of the worn paperbacks were his, with lovingly creased dog-eared pages and notes written neatly in the margins. These were carefully stacked against one of the four bare walls.

The library books were pushed against another wall, organized in stacks by author, subject, or due date depending on the current group of books, and within those categories, were alphabetically organized. The scrolls, mostly all open, lay in a complete arc around the border of the floor, encircling the aforementioned mattress that lay at the heart of it all, right in the middle of the room.

_Organized chaos, _thought Naruto. The wall clock, propped up by a pile notebooks on the wooden floor by his bed, told him it was thirty minutes 'till Team 7 was to meet at the usual place. The thought didn't sway his mood one-way or the other. Rain or shine, they always kept to their schedule and trained, and that was the way Naruto liked it.

Though Sakura had matured drastically in the years that Sasuke had been away, she still had no taste for him or his antics it seemed. She wasn't any more hostile than she had been before, but she wasn't any nicer either, and the only words she spared him were scathing and full of scorn. He was used to it by now, not that it didn't bother him any less. It was merely easier to absorb the blows.

She was a much-improved fighter however, and sparring with her was challenging and fun. Her taijutsu skills were growing more and more every day, and Naruto was proud to be apart of her team.

And now that Sasuke was back, the light had finally returned to her eyes, which brought joy to Naruto. It didn't change how she treated him, but he hadn't expected it to. For a while there, her eyes had begun to grow bitter, but now they had settled back into there original mellow jade hue.

Sasuke, however…he rarely talked at all anymore. Naruto had only recently heard his voice when his superiors, like Kakashi-sensei or the hokage, asked him direct questions, and even then it came out almost like a whisper of sorts. He obviously hadn't been that talkative before, in adolescence, but he had once upon a time sent a few cutting words Naruto's way.

Naruto's stomach squeezed in on itself as he realized he would do just about anything to be on the receiving end of those glares again, to be Sasuke's rival once more. Clunking his head back against the wall, he bit his lip and stared at the ceiling. Now he was just inferior. He didn't even register on Sasuke's radar, not for anything, and that hurt more than any of the tortures Naruto had been dealt or seen in his lifetime.

A self-deprecating smile suddenly stretched his chapped lips, and Naruto decided he was definitely pathetic. Standing, he pulled off the short sleeve, faded orange shirt he had worn the day before and kicked off his threadbare shorts and boxers. A quick shower would liven him up and refresh him.

Once that was done with, he stepped shivering out of the bathroom that adjoined the small bedroom and pulled open the sliding closet door. Grabbing a fresh black long sleeved shirt and cargo pants, he cursed his landlord. Shutting off his hot water in this weather was sure to catch him with a cold.

Dressed and somewhat presentable, Naruto left his bedroom. The only other room in the apartment was a small living room with a tiny kitchenette in one corner. Sitting on his small coach, he pulled on his sandals and shrugged into his flack chunnin vest. His stomach grumbled, but he ignored it in favor of checking his weapons holsters. No money meant no food, he reminded himself.

Being a chunnin did mean he got paid, but somehow his pay checks were always conveniently getting lost in the mail or sent out late, and he often found himself tight for cash. He could barely afford to pay rent on this crappy apartment. Still perched on the edge of the couch, he glared halfheartedly at the floorboards.

Shaking his head, he knew it didn't matter much. The only home he had ever known disappeared the day Sasuke had. It was funny to him how he had never realized it before. Many people connected a home to a house, where a mother and father lived with their two children and maybe a dog. But for Naruto, it had always been his team, Team 7. Kakashi was the foundation, a pillar of strength and stability. Sakura was the heart, the warmth, and the thing that soothed and kept things together. Sasuke was the life, what kept Naruto getting up in the morning, kept him putting on his well practiced, smiling face every day before leaving his rundown apartment. Maybe none of them had actually liked him. They all knew what he was by now, what he held inside him, but they tolerated him. They put up with him and maybe even once, somewhere in the past, had accepted him for what he was.

With Sasuke leaving, everything had fallen apart. Sakura could no longer harness her disgust for what she knew him to be, the jinchuriki and a failure, and Kakashi had begun to show up later and later for meetings until it was rare that he show up at all. And with a hole inside Naruto's life as big as the one left by the Uchiha, he had come to realize something he had been denying ever since that first day when he had been a child, seeing Sasuke sitting all alone out on the dock.

They weren't that different, he and Sasuke. It was true that, while he had never had anything to lose, Sasuke had once had everything: A family, a future, and respect garnered by the reputation of his family name. But inside they were made of the same stuff, a destructive force that gnawed and tore at their insides. It was simply how they each had decided to deal with it that had chosen the course of their fate.

He glanced out the living room window and cursed the rain. It had been raining that day at the Valley of the End, too.

Moving away from the couch, Naruto stepped to the door, and practiced a couple smiles until it felt comfortable and easy on his face. Opening the door, he stepped out into the drizzle, not bothering to lock it behind him. Something like locking his apartment wouldn't stop anyone who was determined enough to do harm to him, and there wasn't anything valuable inside to steal anyway. Besides, he had lost his copy of the key years ago, and had never been able to find it. It was probably hidden out in the training grounds, rusted and muddy.

Jogging down the stairs and out into the street, he made sure a smile sat securely on his face as he walked towards the bridge. People stared, many glared, and some whispered. Mothers clung tighter to their children's hands and elders shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. His heightened senses picked it all up, so he sang loudly in his head to drown out the words that were floating around him in contempt. He wanted to train until he couldn't stand anymore, rain or no, and hopefully that was exactly what Kakashi-sensei would have them do.

Reaching the bridge, he wasn't surprised to find he was the first to arrive. Crossing to the middle, he pressed his stomach against the banister and looked lazily into the water. Small raindrops that continually flecked its surface distorted his reflection, and Naruto watched mesmerized at the different patterns and interferences that were made in the rings of water. Spotting small water bugs that glided along on the water tension made Naruto smile a little unconsciously. At least someone was enjoying all this rain.

Glancing back at his reflection, he frowned though. Something seemed off. Maybe it was the lack of orange. Not everything he owned was orange, and besides he felt too gloomy to really pull of freaking orange this morning. But then he noticed that it wasn't his lack of orange. He had forgotten his headband. Now that it had come to his attention, his shaggy, damp hair was getting into his eyes without it.

Straightening against the banister, his frown deepened. He _never _forgot his headband, not since the day he had received it. Being a believer in things such as omens, Naruto decided that something different was going to happen today. Something was going to break through the dreariness that had been coating his life. It was one of those poignant moments that come over a person when they are absolutely certain of something. He felt his spirits lift instantly at the thought, and shivered as electricity coursed through his veins, causing his cheeks to flush and a genuine smile, albeit small, to light up his blue eyes. He even felt the urge to giggle in his elation, but choked it back, not wanting to put his hope into something so new and intangible.

He remained that way, smiling to himself like an idiot, until he felt the approach of a familiar presence. Glancing over his shoulder, he felt sad again as he watched Sasuke draw closer, but kept a smile on his face.

"Hello, teme."

He only got a halfhearted glance thrown his way before Sasuke quickly dropped his gaze and moved to lean against the opposite banister. Naruto's smile faltered a little. He wasn't even worth a glance anymore, huh?

Well, what had he expected, he argued with himself, a fucking hug or something! Letting a little sigh escape him, he turned back to his reflection, remembering when Kakashi had tried to teach them all to walk on water. Those had been good days, even if he hadn't noticed it then.

Feeling eyes on his back, he glanced over at Sasuke, but he was staring at something above them in the canopy of the trees. Turning around again, Naruto wrote it off and picked at the sodden red paint of the bridge railing.

They remained that way, in utter silence, for ten more minutes. Naruto honed in on Sasuke's near silent breathing. Otherwise the other made no other sound and neither did Naruto. Usually he would ramble on as he had when they were younger, getting riled up and acting like an overall fool, but today the rain was really weighing him down, so he kept his mouth shut. It didn't get a reaction out of Sasuke anymore anyway, positive or negative, so what was the point?

Feeling eyes on the back of his head again, Naruto turned around again to meet Sasuke's dark, dark eyes. Frowning, he felt himself become very self-conscious under the other's scrutinizing gaze. It was neither hostile, as it might have been years ago, nor nice, but merely neutral. Finally setting his face into a mock scowl to hide his anxiety, Naruto drew in a breath to say something, anything. But just then, Sakura came rushing through the rain, a damp, dark red umbrella in hand. A few strands of pale pink hair stuck damply to her forehead, but otherwise she looked warm and dry. Naruto let his scowl drop and released the breath through his nose.

"Arigato, Sasuke-kun, sorry I'm late! Why aren't you with an umbrella! Here, borrow mine!" Immediately, She was at Sasuke's side, pressing herself closer to his side. She thrust the umbrella out, but Sasuke, of course, made no move to take it. Smiling regardless, Sakura drew it back over her head again.

"Well, alright. You don't have to take it." Turning a little, she gave a small pout, not thinking that anyone was watching, before focusing on Naruto.

"Hey baka! You're without an umbrella, too! You'll catch a cold and slow us down on missions." Sakura huffed. She drew her pink poncho closer to herself.

Naruto let her slight wash over him and then wash away. He kept himself smiling. She would always offer anything she could to Sasuke even though he ignored her, but she would never once offer him a helping hand, although he would never once refuse it.

He was gathering air in his lungs to say something, anything, once again, but suddenly she just looked at him with eyes so sad, Naruto was startled into silence.

Confused and unsure, he watched her turn back to Sasuke, and chatter inanely at him. Dark eyes watched her, but he didn't seem to be really listening. Chewing on his lip, Naruto tried to puzzle out what had just happened but couldn't formulate an answer.

So caught up was he in his thoughts, he didn't notice it as dark eyes continued to glance up at him, always watching.


End file.
